The whole 2006 reboot thing was pointless and things would have worked better without it.
John from Cork
Posts: 129MI6 Agent
The 06 reboot was just done to ape batman. I think this was a mistake considering all the throwbacks eon have shoehorned into the Craig era, so here are the tweaks that I have made to have kept Craig as the same previous 5 bonds. CR the pts would have been just another mission, not bond getting his OO status. Bond would have said to VL, I never thought I'd love again after losing my wife on my wedding day many years ago. Skyfall, eve wouldn't have been miss Moneypenny but there'd be a reference that she was replacing M's long serving personal assistant who was taking early retirement. SPECRE wouldn't have been SPECRE, keep the disgruntled foster brother thing but Waltz wouldn't have been playing E.S.B and not of that I'm the auther of your pain nonsense. 2019, 50 yrs since ohmss and the rights of SPECRE etc back with EOn, I'd have done the long awaited proper revenge for Tracey's death, bond would have got his revenge on Blofeld and Erma bunt and I'd probably have cast an new younger bond for this. Sorry if my writing isn't very coherent, I got a wisdom tooth out this morning and I'm very dizzy my the meds
Comments
I suppose the actual plot of Casino Royale does not need to be a first mission. It wasn't in the unfilmed Ben Hecht version, and in the "funny version" Bond came out of retirement for that mission! (though he did contract out the actual work to amateur Evelyn Tremble, for whom it was a first mission). and the whole Vesper affair was unconvincing even as Fleming wrote it, Bond was supposed to be 35 when he fell in love like a schoolboy!
I think its more that...
1 - its fitting to make Fleming's first novel a first mission, and
2 - I personally feel the Brosnan movies were not really working out, and were redundant, and a whole new approach was maybe needed. Mike'n'Babs may have felt that as well. and doing so allowed them to tell more interesting stories that would not have worked with the traditional episodic formula
It wasn't just because it was fashionable. EON considered making TLD an origin story back in 1986, a treatment where Bond is in the navy in the begining was even written. They wanted to make an origin story for many years before CR.
I think CR is very good movie and the shakeup the series needed. It was stuff like the retrofitted plotlines and making every movie about Bond's past that creates problems for some of the later Craig movies, not the origin story.
I'm more than fine with the reboot, despite liking Brosnans films as well. I think it's fine that each era is approached in a new way creatively. They took a risk with this and got some backlash for it (e.g. Bond being blond - OMG!) but it worked perfectly in the beginning.
The problem is rather that they did not follow through with it. Or maybe never really thought about what they wanted to do with this new Bond after CR, i.e. once they ran out of Fleming material. One of CR's few weaknesses is that Bond never actually defeats the villain Le Chiffre, but is saved ex machina by another villain (Now, pay attention 007, this will be important later!). 🤓
QoS is essentially CR's bonus disc, and only ever hints at a bigger picture (the organization that is Quantum) still left to be untangled by Bond in subsequent movies. Everything is set up for a revenge story like you mention, but it should have been Bond slowly but surely taking out Quantum and Mr White, who would have made a great main villain or modern day Blofeld in my opinion, being the grey eminence behind some other more mundane evildoers like Dominic Greene. In the end, the Bond that travels to Kazan and lets Kabira live has made his peace with Vesper, his job, and with M. We eagerly await the next film to be the one where he succesfully takes out the real villains as the mature and confident agent he has become!
Instead, Skyfall already massively deviates from the idea of an overarching storyline. Bond is suddenly depressed and too old for his job immediately after his first mission, and still has a very difficult relationship with M (again?) after she orders to shoot him. The villain, Silva, originates from within Mi6 (1st), and gets his - succesful - revenge story against M, instead of Bond doing anything whatsoever about Quantum. We are also introduced to a new M (Mallory), with whom Bond has a difficult relationship (of course!) in the beginning. However that is overcome by the end of that film. The viewer enjoys an uplifting ending where everything seems back to normal, and we eagerly await the next film to be the one where he finally defeats Quantum, or if that can't be, at least succesfully carries out a proper mission on Ms orders!
Instead, the complete mess that is SPECTRE starts with orders from the old M from beyond the grave, because the new M that was so carefully introduced suddenly can no longer be trusted (again!). The villain is a certain Ernst Brofeld played by an unusually unconvincing Christoph Waltz, who has already dealt with all members of Quantum without us ever seeing it, except for a powerless caricature of Mr White who kills himself, in line with the problematic pattern that it's never actually Bond who defeats the villains (see above). Brofeld was also supposedly the even greyer eminence behind eeeeeeverything that ever happened in this timeline, but only because he did not like Bond in his childhood... With Denbigh, there is also another villain inside Mi6 (again!) who is defeated by new M who apparently needed something else to do now that he can no longer be trusted to be Bond's boss. Q and Moneypenny are also heavily involved as field agents, because their previous jobs (providing some interesting gadgets and being M's secretary) are no longer appealing now that M is a villain (again. maybe?).
In NTTD, this messy and chaotic writing reaches another lowpoint when the only just spectacularly re-introduced SPECTRE is also, like Quantum before it, completely taken out in a few seconds during a birthday party by another complete newcomer (Safin) who was, of course, actually around since the dawn of time, we just never knew about it (see NTTD PTS). Again, it is not Bond who defeats them. Killing Brofeld happens unknowingly and by accident, and can thus be considered as a success for the villains more than for Bond. The main villain's plan however is only possible because Mi6 itself (again!!) developed
a new Corona virussomething something with nanobots in a lab, on the orders of the new M. He cannot be trusted, remember? 🤨Faced with the two unnecessary options of going either for a continued "getting over Vesper" storyline for 15 years (!) or a new "love of his life" bond girl, they attempted to do both at the same time, which fails miserably not only because of the way this character is written and portrayed by Lea Seydoux. Like many failing relationships, it is extended for a while by an unexpected child, but cannot continue anyhow because
of how contagious Corona really isapparently death had been planned as the culmination of Bond's story arc since Daniel Craigs first casting in 2005. Yeah right..... 😂"- That is something to be afraid of."
Very well put, @Ornithologist Although I didn't like Skyfall and still consider its villain's "revenge" motive to be one of the weakest ever presented by the Bond makers, it feels relatively okay within the framework of a reboot Craig-Bond. As you explain, the problems do start with Spectre and it was around this time that the Marvel Universe was beginning to unfold, which I believe is why the writers / producers tried to meld the four - now five - films together. Thing is, they've completely misunderstood why the films and the novels - original or subsequent - worked so well: it is because they can be viewed / read in isolation. Okay, there is a slight problem with both OHMSS and DAF as neither explains to an uninitiated audience who Blofeld is, but you really don't need the explanation as it becomes obvious he's the bad guy. Similarly all Fleming's novels, even if they are faintly joined, can be read without any prior knowledge, even those which do directly follow. The producers may deny their intent was to ape the practice of another franchise, but it is so bloomin' obvious they should just admit it, and admit they got it wrong because it was never planned that way. Retrospective dot-joining is a thankless task - as fan's we try and do it here all the time and it never works !
Some very good points from all in this discussion👍
For me, I’ve never been solid in my acceptance of DC’s Bond and was one of his greatest detractors on AJB when he was first announced, though I’ve come to greatly appreciate his movies (if that makes sense) and even “got the t-shirt” so to speak in the form of collectables. I think that DC’s outing because it’s such an experiment rightly is self-contained in its own story arc outside of the series’ canon. Therefore the way (spoiler alert!!! Lol) it ended in NTTD was fitting and in THAT WAY was very Fleming (if not in terms of the character’s essence). There were no limits in a manner of speaking to which extent they wanted to go, like the killing off of M, making Blofeld Bond’s long lost foster brother, etc. Even the fundamental change in Bond’s character, admittedly for me a wonderful experiment, was allowable in this artistic bubble.
I think we all want to see a return to the formula from the 60s and 70s..
This is what they did so well with GoldenEye. All this going rogue on his own was fine once or twice (I actually love LTK, think it was ahead of its time).
'Strangeways is presumptuous, he speaks for himself - and others - who cling to timid, outdated and unrealistic movies. Must I remind you, AJB, of our overwhelming superiority over rival film franchises before we give it away!'
Roger Moore 1927-2017